


You're in the darkness all alone

by furious_hope



Series: Flares [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Depression, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21892474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furious_hope/pseuds/furious_hope
Summary: Life as an Azkaban guard.
Series: Flares [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1565818
Kudos: 1





	You're in the darkness all alone

**Author's Note:**

> Nearly at some less sad stories (getting towards the chorus where the tone changes) but this is not one of them. 
> 
> Discussion of death, depression, prison, squib rights campaign
> 
> If I need to add any further warnings/you want more detail, please let me know.

Alicia felt tired. She chewed listlessly at her chocolate, the sickly sweet taste coating her throat. It wasn’t even effective anymore - Dementor exposure was cumulative as much as anything, and she couldn’t leave. Sitting at the entrance, waiting on the arrival of the Aurors, her mind drifted.

For the umpteenth time, she wondered how she had ended up on this job. The pay had been attractive, of course. Mainly she wanted a job in the Wizarding World which took squibs. She’d marched in the rallies in the sixties, but nothing seemed to have really changed. She remembered the righteous fury they’d had, he feeling of justice, the chance of change, but it had all dwindled down to nothing in the end. The threat of the Death Eaters had to take political precedence, she remembered one smarmy man in posh robes drawling. They kept trying, but their groups had become targets, and nowhere was safe. Not in the same way as before - where death came from poverty, being thrown on the streets, magical accidents, the ever-present low threat - now, death came as a hooded figure in the night, and a chilling flash of green. The groups had broken apart under the fear. She had tried to do something for a few years, and then she had become scared too, as the attacks became ever more rampant. She'd looked for a job, and a place to hide.

Her younger self would have hated what she’d become, but she needed the money to live. She was culturally magical, and just didn’t fit in the Muggle world: trying for jobs there had been a nightmare. Not that this wasn’t, to be honest.

She tried to rouse herself from the exhausted gloomy mood she was in, but it was difficult. The entire prison was saturated in a miasma of dreary, wrenching misery. It sunk into people’s bones, and nobody was unaffected. Meeting her colleagues who lived here full time had been the first of many warning signs she had ignored when training for the job. All the longterm guards were either sad or cruel, or occasionally both. Andrew Long, who’d been here the longest, looked like all the colour had been leeched out of him over the long years. Others had a hard glint in their eyes, and tended to exercise their power brutally. Alicia had hated it. At the beginning of her work here, she had reported any excesses, physically gotten between guards and prisoners, even written a letter to the prophet about the conditions. It was inhumane, she knew. But it had all come to nothing, and Azkaban drained her so much. She stopped what she saw, but everything took so much effort. Arriving on time felt like an impossible burden, walking along a corridor an arduous chore. Hatred was so much work, so she saved it for herself, and then sank in it.

The prisoners had it worse of course. Their screams were blood curdling, but after a while they started to fade, and that was worse - her train of thought came to a ponderous end as a group of Aurors came through the door. One said something to her, but she couldn’t really follow it. She nodded with deadened eyes, and they walked past her, dragging another prisoner in. Outside, the air was misty with Dementor trails.


End file.
